Oil price's impact on Houston real estate market

[David Y.]

Hi all, I just joined BP today and greetings to you from Houston, TX.  I bought a rental property  (single family) in Houston about 15 month ago with a very good tenant.  Our contract expires very soon and the property value has increased 15% since I bought it.  I was wondering if I should sell the property for profit to avoid the possible market crash since the oil price has been dropped so much and many big oil company are laying off people.  I will appreciate your comments on my consideration, thanks in advance.

David

[Jesse T.]

Timing the market rarely turns out well.  Real Estate may be worse than stocks due to the transaction costs.

How much equity do you have in the house?  Would you be in trouble if the house was down 15% rather than up 15%?  Would you be in trouble if rents go down 20%?

If you can't handle the down-side, you might want to get out, and look for a deal with more margins to get back in.